I had waited forty pleasantly cool minutes already. Long enough to discover that the rows of pot plants along the low wall dividing the forty-foot-square hall into five smaller bays were made of plastic. Long enough to admire the pinewood walls, the ankle-deep carpet, the carefully lowered ceiling with its inset lights. In each bay there was a large desk, with one large chair behind it, one at the side, one in front. Nearly all occupied. Dividing each bay neatly in two stood a second, smaller desk; for the secretary-receptionist with his back discreetly to his boss. In front of him, in each bay, the long black leather bench for waiting on.
I waited. There was still someone for the big man to see before me. Very sorry, said the secretary apologetically, but the schedule had been crowded even before Mr Teller’s cable arrived. Could I possibly wait?
So why not? I had three weeks to spare.
The light was dim, and piped music poured over everything like syrup. That and the built-in deadness of the acoustics made the earnest consultations going on at the five big desks completely inaudible to the waiting benches, while at the same time giving the customers a comforting illusion that they weren’t alone in their troubles. Everyone, at the core of things, was alone. Just some more than others.
I hadn’t slept all night after leaving Lynnie; but not her fault. It had been one long stupid struggle between a craving for oblivion and conviction that appeasing it wasn’t so much morally wrong as a thoroughgoing defeat. I had never learnt to accept defeat. Obstinacy had given me what success I had had in my job, and it alone seemed to be keeping me alive, since all other props were as much use as toothpicks in an avalanche. Enthusiasm for finding Dave Teller’s horse burned in me as brightly as wet coal dust: and the nation would hardly collapse if I left its employ.
Caroline had crowded like a flood-tide through my head and down my body. Caroline... whom I would have married, had it not been for the husband who would not divorce her.
Caroline had left him to live with me, and had felt guilty about it. A mess. An ordinary, everyday mess. Her fine passion had fretted away over six frustrating years of will-he won’t-he; and to the end he wouldn’t. Not that he’d ever got her back. In the year since she had left me she had returned to nursing and was working as a sister in a Nairobi hospital, impervious to come-back letters from either of us.
The sharp pain of her departure had dulled to the extent that I no longer felt it through every waking minute: it came stabbing back at longer and longer intervals. But when it did, I remembered her as she’d been at the beginning, and the hunger was pretty well unbearable. It was easy enough to find different girls to talk to, to work with, to take to bed: hard to find a match on all levels: and Caroline had been a match. In the past year, instead of receding, the loneliness had closed in. My work, of its nature, set me apart. And I had no one to go home to, to share with, to care for. The futility and emptiness had gone down to my roots, and nothing seemed to lie ahead but years and years more of what I was already finding intolerable.
The clients at the big desk stood up, shook hands, and left. The secretary ushered the man with the earlier appointment round into the presence. I went on waiting, without impatience. I was accustomed to it.
The punt, investigated in Henley that morning, had produced nothing but ten different sets of smudged fingerprints, of which the topmost and stickiest were Peter’s. The Yogi Bear handkerchief was on its way round the manufacturers, in the distant hope that someone could tell where it had been sold. Dave Teller, briefly visited, had said wanly to charge everything to him. The Super VC 10 which lifted off at 3 PM British Summertime from Heathrow had landed at Kennedy at 3.10. Buttress Life closed its doors at 6, which gave it still a half hour to go. And outside in the canyon streets the hundred degree heatwave crept up a notch to a hundred and one.
My turn came round for the big desk. The big man, on his feet behind it, held out a large dry flabby hand and produced the sincere smile of the professional insurance man. Having settled me into the large comfortable chair alongside he sat down himself and picked up the cable discreetly placed to hand by the secretary. A polished chunk of wood sat on the desk between us. On it, neat gold letters facing me said helpfully: Paul M. Zeissen.
‘We received this cable from Mr Teller,’ he said. A slight, very slight undertone of disapproval.
I nodded. I had sent it myself.
‘Our own investigators are experts.’ He didn’t like me coming: but he wouldn’t want to lose the Teller policies. His politeness had effort behind it.
I smoothed him down, more from habit than anything else.
‘Of course. Please think of me simply as an auxiliary. Mr Teller persuaded me to come over because he has unfortunately broken a leg in England, and will be immobilized in hospital for a few weeks. He sent me very much on impulse, as a personal friend, to... kind of represent him. To see if there was anything I could do. There was no suggestion that he wasn’t satisfied with your firm.’ I paused delicately. ‘If he criticized anyone, it was the police.’
Paul M. Zeissen’s smile warmed up a fraction from within: but he hadn’t risen to high executive status in his tough profession without disbelieving half that everyone said. That was all right with me. Half of what I’d said was true. Or half true, anyway.
‘Mr Teller understands of course,’ he said, ‘that it is for our own sakes that we are looking for the horse?’
‘Naturally,’ I agreed. ‘Mr Teller is also most anxious that you should succeed, as the horse is irreplaceable. He would infinitely prefer his return to any amount of insurance money.’
‘A million and a half,’ said Zeissen reverently.
‘Worth more on the hoof,’ I said.
He glanced at me with a first gleam of real welcome. Once he’d swallowed the firm’s affronted pride, it was quite clear that they’d nothing to lose by letting me in.
‘One of our best men, Walt Prensela, is in charge of the Chrysalis case,’ he said. ‘He’ll give you the picture. He knows you’re coming, I sent him a memo with a copy of the cable.’ He pressed the switch on his desk intercom.
‘Walt? We have Mr Hawkins from England here. Shall I have him come up to you now?’
The polite question was, as so often in American affairs, an equally polite order. The affirmative duly came. Zeissen flipped the switch and stood up.
‘Walt’s office is one floor up, number four seven. Anyone will direct you. Would you like to go up now?’
I would; and I went.
I’d expected to have to deal with the same ruffled feathers in four seven, but I didn’t, because Walt had done his homework, though I wasn’t sure of that at first. He greeted me with business-like casualness, shook hands, waved me to the spare chair, and sat down himself, all in five smooth seconds. Much my age, I judged, but shorter and a good deal thicker. His hands were square and powerful with nails so brief that the fingertips’ pads seemed to be boiling over backwards. There were middle European origins in the bone structure of the skull, topped by roughly cropped wiry grey-brown hair, and his deep-socketed brown eyes were set permanently into the I-don’t-believe-a-word-of-it expression of his boss downstairs, only more so.
‘So, Gene,’ he said, neither with nor without much friendliness, ‘you’ve come a long way.’
‘Dave Teller’s idea, Walt,’ I said mildly.
‘Looking for horses... do you do much of that?’ His voice was flat; uninformative.